German streamer HandOfBlood has broken new ground in the arms race of gamers who use increasingly absurd controllers. The influencer recently played the notoriously challenging Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy using a motion controller embedded in a floppy foam hammer, while also contorting himself in a black cauldron like the game’s protagonist.
This is not, I must stress, “Getting Over It in real life.” That would require a level of upper body strength and endurance on par with an Olympic kayaker or Paralympic rower, as well as an indestructible hammer and an inadvisable disregard for insurance liability. No, this is simply the latest entry in the honorable lineage of gamers going at it with weird controllers, like Anna Ellsworth playing Elden Ring with a harp, or SuperLouis64 tackling various Souls games with a Ring Fit motion controller.
The video consists of HandOfBlood occupying his (apparently too small) cauldron with his Getting Over It gameplay projected onto a green screen behind him. He gives it the old college try, but the unideal conditions of his setup really take their toll.
“It’s really work, it’s not just sitting at the computer in sweatpants and playing with a super light extreme pro mouse, no!” He exclaims early in the video.
As someone whose job mostly consists of sitting at the computer in sweatpants, I’d like to just say it’s really hard sometimes, okay?
It takes HandOfBlood about 36 minutes to overcome the game’s first obstacle, a dead tree players have to climb over using the game’s legendarily unorthodox controls to propel their little cauldron hammer man along. Later on, with his discomfort mounting, HandOfBlood delivers some advice to his audience: “People, always sit up straight in front of the computer,” he says. “Get yourself an ergonomic chair… or kettle.”
Even though he doesn’t make it all that far into Getting Over It, HandOfBlood certainly put in a champion’s effort, and the whole video’s a real treat to watch.